Migration (empire) - linear version: Gallery Label - Current

Author

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Date

2012-08-27

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Doug Aitken is considered among the leading video artists of his generation. He is known for creating exquisitely produced and engaging videos that utilize the visual richness of the medium to capture the complexity of society and culture today.In Migration (empire) - linear version, the movements of wild North American migratory animals are transposed onto the ubiquitous space of the modern roadside motel. As the indigenous animals inhabit these vacant and sterile interiors, the video explores the complex relationship between America's wilderness and its sprawling built environment. Images of vast landscapes, roadside businesses, and industrial cityscapes call to mind the migration of settlers across the great expanse of land -- settlers who met the untamed wilderness to forge new ways of life defined westward expansion. But what was lost in the ambition to expand?Aitken's close studies of wild, North American animals released within the artificial habitat of the motel are spellbinding. A horse occupies a room, watching wild horses run free on television; a buffalo, the tragic American symbol of the wild West, trashes the space. The animals' displacement from their native environment seems at once humorous and horrific, strangely familiar and prophetic.